Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

and the spiritual (Sorenson 2000, 2004). Consequently every psychoanalyst has a unique set
of beliefs and values that can be located within the interpretative framework developed here.
This interpretative framework is composed of four areas represented by three or five solid
lines and one dashed line. The solid lines represent a boundary or a framework that delimits
or defines a term, such as ‘spirituality’ for example. 511 A danger of any form of dogmatic
or fundamental form of psychoanalysis, religion or spirituality is that it becomes so defined
in an attempt to retain analytic, doctrinal or liturgical purity, the result is a hermetically
sealed world (as seen in figures 2 and 3), that offers no, or very little, external engagement.
While recognition is given to the value of other ideas, concepts or traditions, there is no
‘space’ for creative engagement or synthesis between the two. 512 The interpretative
framework is boundaried by fixed lines. A different balance of these factors can be found in
a dominant psychoanalytic interpretative framework seen in figure two, on the following
page.
511 See chapter two for a discussion of the nature of definitions and the working definitions adopted in this
thesis for religion, spirituality and the sacred.
512 LaMothe has adopted Winnicott’s ‘potential space’ and reframed this ‘in terms of four interrelated,
dialectical processes (surrender-generation, recognition-negation, care-quiescence, and disruption-repair)’
(LaMothe 2005: 207). He believes this more fully captures the self-states experienced in analytic relationship
and enhances ‘intersubjectivity, meaning, value, and aliveness’ (LaMothe 2005: 220) understood in analytic
and religious terms.
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